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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testifies before a Senate investigative committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, April 27, 2010. Goldman Sachs denied reaping vast profits from the collapse of the US housing market as its top executive and a star trader faced hostile questions in Congress over the 2008 financial meltdown. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife)

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is looking pretty good right now. For the last few years, Wall Street’s most revered financial firm has been humbled by a $550 million Securities & Exchange Commission settlement, humiliating congressional hearings and a former employee who resigned in the opinion pages of The New York Times. Fabulous Fab and muppets seemed to be dragging down the reputation of the venerable Goldman Sachs.

There has been plenty of speculation that these problems would force Blankfein from the top job and change the way Goldman Sachs does business. But two big events that hit financial markets recently are making Goldman Sachs stand out on Wall Street again.

When Goldman Sachs lost out to Morgan Stanley for the lead underwriting position of the Facebook IPO, it was a bit of a blow given that many on Wall Street thought Goldman’s big investment in Facebook early in 2011 was partly a play to grab hold of the offering. Morgan Stanley’s tech team has long dominated Silicon Valley, but the fact that JPMorgan Chase got a more prominent role in the offering seemed like a loss for Goldman.

With Facebook’s shares plummeting after its IPO that is no longer the case. Facebook made sure to price its shares as richly as possible in the IPO, compelling Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter to enter the market and defend the $38 offering price on Friday after the IPO disappointed investors. It is unclear to what extent Morgan Stanley’s actions will eat away at the $50 to $60 million of underwriting fees it earned, but Bloomberg News reported that Morgan Stanley was the only underwriter with the responsibility to support the shares.

Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, sold $1.09 billion of Facebook shares in the offering, nearly half the shares it owned for itself and its clients. That is increasingly looking like a genius move now that Facebook is trading nearly 12% below its offering price.

At the same time, Goldman Sachs is regaining its reputation as the smartest big firm on Wall Street. The halo that hovered over Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan has evaporated amid the so-called London Whale trading debacle that has already cost JPMorgan $2 billion and could cost it as much as $5 billion. This is the kind of trading disaster that Blankfein and Goldman have long avoided.

It wasn’t that long ago that Dimon was sounding magnanimous, advising his employees in the wake of the Greg Smith muppet fiasco at Goldman not to “seek advantage from a competitor’s alleged issues or hearsay—ever.” Blankfein still has a lot of problems. Goldman’s post-financial crisis image remains pretty bad with the public at large and the investment bank’s stock is down 27% in the last year. For Blankfein, however, this has been a much-needed good stretch.